Yesterday was one of those lemon-serving days. When technology fails us, what can we do but make lemonade?

A Mix of Lemons

It actually started the day before when the ISP and landline phone carrier had an outage starting at 2 P.M. I had been sailing along with a really productive day, then blam-lemon splat.

In what seems to be the norm these days, calling customer service was a visit with rising blood pressure – more my Mom’s than mine, but there is a trickle-down effect.

There is something humorous about holding for technical support while listening to a cheery, female voice suggest how much quicker it would be to take your problem to their website. Hello – if I could access your blasted website, I wouldn’t be calling!

The next recorded message told me that they “have been made aware of an outage in our area. If you would like more details, press 1.” So, fool that I am, I am sucked into pressing 1, only to hear the exact same message. The outage went on through the night until 7 A.M. the next morning.

Next came the teasing of service – it’s up, it’s down, it’s up again. On top of that, the company repairs affected the towers for my wireless phone, sending all callers directly to voice mail, without ringing my phone.

The Bitter Mixed With the Sweet

One of my callers was fellow freelance writer, Anne Wayman. Apparently, Anne was having her own technological challenges. We decided we missed the notification of the full moon. We had a good laugh over it.

What can you do when technology serves lemons? Make lemonade-but you have to start with the right ingredients. You wondered where I was going with this, didn’t you?

Creating the Right Mix

It was a very lucky thing for me that the technology failure occurred at the beginning of the month. I am energized by the start of something new – a new project, a new client, a new month.

On Memorial Day, I developed my marketing and work plan for the month of June. As a result, my calendar had very specific tasks laid out. Unfortunately, on the days of my technology faux pas, research was the main ingredient. My projects consisted of blogs, ghostwritten articles and a white paper.

Was I frustrated? Definitely. But, by mapping out my tasks for the month, I could look at the mix and change the order of things. I figured out what I could do offline and reallocated time for research-blasting when I had access.

Before this happened, I had been lax on planning. I do that sometimes. I get so caught up in the day-to-day, I forget about planning beyond the end of my typing fingers. As a result, I find I am not as productive. So, I regroup and make a plan. This time, it really paid off.

The moral of the story? For me, it’s only have problems at the beginning of the month. Now, there’s a plan!

What are your ingredients for making lemonade out of technology lemons?